Kolstad wrote:Brilliant topic, drum tuning. Wonder why we don't discuss this more.cassmcentee wrote:Thanks for bringing the topic up Len!Len911 wrote:Should you pitch check your drums? Tune them to be harmonic, or just accept them as a possible dissonance, and how might they affect eq'ing?
In my opinion the drums should always be TUNED!!!! (Just as important as tuning your bass)
I also tune my cymbals/claps/snare in EZDrummer2
I've had to teach numerous drummers the importance of this in the studio.
A kick in the wrong key would make my bass sound like dog poo
How should they be tuned, and what about modes?
Cass, any insights?
Drum tuning could be a very long thread of its own. I've been recording drums almost longer than I've been playing them, and I was fortunate to work with some great drummers, (Merle Perkins and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith are memorable, among the multitudes) and they all had a method.
I can boil down to some generalities, but first, throw out the kick and snare; you gotta buy the right drum and then figure it out; the kick sound is gonna be somewhat genre dependent and the snare sound is individual to the drummer and the drum-with some caveats.
Most folks tune the toms to the harmonic series; that's the notes you can get on a bugle. If there's four toms, you can usually walk up to the kit and play 'First Call' or 'Charge', (the hockey/baseball one, not the real one) but it takes six or eight to play 'Reveille'. Sometimes you'll find them arranged pentatonically, tuned to the black keys on the piano-one way to hopefully avoid that one bass note that causes that one tom to buzz like an angry hornet in the soundbabe's headphones. Some drummers deliberately put the whole kit a quarter-step outta tune for the same reason.
A snare (with the snares engaged) makes a lotta white noise that basically masks the tuning, which is only important in terms of achieving the right balance of crack/pop/ring; if you plan on doing ghost notes or press rolls, you tune the resonant head as tight as it will go, and adjust the batter head to taste.
Kick drums can be all over the place, but the most significant attribute is probably sustain, rather than pitch-most ears aren't so sensitive to pitch, down where the kick drum dwells. Think about the difference between the pointy kick you'd hear in reggae or funk versus the booom of a hiphop 808 kick. That's the range, and in between you've got metal-style beater click and that puffy, pillowy yarn-ball sound you hear in ballads and some types of jazz. The kick is about punch and texture, maybe moreso than pitch; that said, rock bands tend to tune the kick to E, A, D and sometimes, G, unless they tune to G# so they don't get that one bass note....but diatonically, like on a harmonica, in either case.
I was also fortunate to watch some old school hiphop guys work back in the hardware sampling days; those guys tuned and pitch-shifted every sample to fit the track; if you heard a sample that wasn't perfectly on pitch, it was on purpose. I think that started with drum machines, in the early 80's, when people were trying to get real drums to sound impossibly dry and tight, and then Roger Linn came along.
Try this at home: I learned this with a drum VI, but it works in any DAW with drums real or otherwise: Pitch the overheads down a step and a half, and compress the squatch outta the rest of the drum mics. For a more subtle effect, just pitch shift a room mic.